


Lines and Squares

by emungere



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to louiselux for the beta.</p><p>The poem Mycroft and Lestrade are talking about is Lines and Squares by AA Milne. </p><p>Takes place (very) roughly 10 - 15 years before the series starts, probably just before Lestrade gets promoted to DI. I realize it's stated in canon that Sherlock and Lestrade only met five years ago. Consider this a very slight AU.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Lines and Squares

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to louiselux for the beta.
> 
> The poem Mycroft and Lestrade are talking about is Lines and Squares by AA Milne. 
> 
> Takes place (very) roughly 10 - 15 years before the series starts, probably just before Lestrade gets promoted to DI. I realize it's stated in canon that Sherlock and Lestrade only met five years ago. Consider this a very slight AU.

The black car rolls to a halt well inside the warehouse. The entrance is now lost to distance and a carefully installed lighting system that ensures the guests here will see only what Mycroft wants them to see. The man now exiting the car, however, does not bother to look back.

Mycroft offers him a chair, and he declines. It’s funny; no one ever takes the chair. Mycroft would stop bringing it, but there is such a thing as common courtesy.

They exchange common courtesies, or rather Mycroft offers them, and receives in return a hard stare. No one has a stare quite like that of a policeman. It renders him almost unreadable. Sergeant Lestrade wears an immense amount of armour for someone his age, though of course it’s nothing to Mycroft’s own.

“In your last few cases, you have acquired the assistance of one Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Mycroft says, getting to the point at last. Lestrade is coming off a bad case, on his way home, adrenaline, blood sugar, and caffeine levels currently plummeting. It makes him more vulnerable, but Mycroft doesn’t want him stupid and therefore cannot wait too long. It’s a fine line.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes often assists the police with their inquiries,” Lestrade says, deadpan.

“You refer to the cocaine habit. I believe he’s put that behind him now, thanks in no small part to you, Sergeant. One wonders why you would take on such a problematic case.”

“One can keep on bloody wondering,” Lestrade says, and reaches into his jacket pocket. He lights a cigarette and lets it hang from the corner of his mouth.

“Our fair city’s policemen are not well paid, I believe. Perhaps I might offer a certain financial--”

“Shut it,” Lestrade says.

“My, my. So rude, Sergeant. You don’t even know--”

“Here’s what I know,” Lestrade says, and Mycroft lets him interrupt, curious. “You’re government. You stink of it, shoes to hair gel. So either you can force this through official channels or you can’t. If you can, good for you. I imagine you’ll find out all you want to know about Sherlock Holmes. If you can’t, you’re not getting anything from me for cheap tricks and bribery.”

“It would be quite an expensive bribe.”

“No thanks.”

He doesn’t even consider it, not for a second. That sort of blind and unthinking morality is rare. The man is not stupid, however. Most people in this situation guess organized crime, not government. (“Same thing,” Sherlock would say, has said.)

Mycroft smiles. “Perhaps then, I can impose on you to continue watching over him. It would be _such_ a shame if anything were to...happen to him.”

Lestrade’s eyes go harder still, and his jaw tenses. There are no threats; clearly Lestrade realizes they would be futile.

“What do you want with him?” Lestrade says, in a voice that strives for calm and almost reaches it.

“For the moment? Merely information. I do worry about him so. You must understand. He is a man who bears careful watching.”

Lestrade has said the same himself, and added _from a safe distance_ only mostly under his breath. Mycroft has myriad wire taps and surveillance devices in the sergeant’s home (and work; he had his eye on Scotland Yard well before Lestrade became relevant), and from Sherlock’s recent...abodes.

Two months ago, Lestrade dragged him out of an abandoned warehouse, arrested him for possession, was talked into letting him assist in a serial murder case, and subsequently let Sherlock sleep on his couch for almost a week until they had a screaming row. Lestrade provided the screaming; Sherlock, as ever, provided the row. Something to do with hagfish in the bathtub, Mycroft recalls.

There is something between them. Mycroft suspects a promise, extracted for Sherlock’s get out of jail free card. No more cocaine. Clean yourself up. Do something with your life. Mycroft has no audio file of that conversation, and it irks him. Sherlock will never tell him, but Lestrade might, if Mycroft plays him correctly. So far he’s a simple enough instrument.

“You’re his brother,” Lestrade says, with sudden certainty.

Mycroft blinks at him once, slowly, because it is polite to show surprise. The man has earned it. Mycroft is, in fact, surprised. Lestrade’s certainty is clearly not built on Sherlock’s brand of deductive logic. It is intuition, the leap of a spark from one wire to the next.

“On what do you base that fascinating theory?” Mycroft says.

Lestrade snorts. “On you saying that just now. You sound just like him. And it’s in your eyes.”

“I’m told there’s remarkably little family resemblance.” Mummy always said Sherlock got all the looks and Mycroft all the talent. She was wrong about the talent.

“Not how you look. How you look at things.”

This one is going on grade two surveillance immediately. He catches his assistant’s eyes, and she nods. She’s only been with him a month and already possesses a frankly disturbing ability to read his every thought and predict his every whim.

“Is this where you have me shipped off to the gulag, then?” Lestrade says, oozing boredom and smoke with every word.

“This is where you go home, Sergeant. I shall follow your career with interest.”

Lestrade drops his cigarette to the floor and grinds it under his heel. “He said something about you once, when he was coming off the stuff.”

“Oh?” Mycroft finds he is bracing himself.

“He said you bunked off school to read to him when he was sick.” Lestrade throws him a half-smile like a bone. “A.A. Milne. I would’ve thought Shakespeare or Ovid, with you two.”

“He liked the poem about the bears,” Mycroft says, not entirely intentionally. It’s the least guarded statement he’s made to anyone in a decade.

Lestrade breathes out a laugh. “Just look at me walking in all the squares.”

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. “Am I the bears in this scenario?”

“Not in mine. You seem to be the bears in Sherlock’s scenario.” He makes finger quotes around the last word. “Why is that?”

“You’d better ask Sherlock. I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Irrelevant, Sergeant. Both options end with you not getting your answer.”

“The day I get a straight answer out of anyone with the last name Holmes, I’ll probably have a coronary. I’ll be going then, shall I? Or did you have some more threats to make?”

“Not threats, as such. You’ll get a call from your superior tomorrow. I merely want to be sure you know where you stand. Time to choose a side, Sergeant.”

“Already have,” Lestrade says, starting back for the car.

“Oh?”

“Mine.”

Interesting, Mycroft thinks. He switches on the audio feed, but Lestrade says nothing, all the way back to his flat. Even more interesting is the call Lestrade makes when he gets home.

“What do you want, Lestrade?” Sherlock says. “I’m in the middle of a very important experiment involving--”

“Do you have a brother?”

Sherlock is silent a moment. “You know I do. I spoke to you of him once.”

“Wasn’t sure you remembered. You were pretty badly off. Tall, losing his hair, big nose? Sort of stoops at you?”

“Civil servant shoes, always carries an umbrella,” Sherlock suggests.

“That’s him.”

“Did he abduct you off the street?”

“Happens a lot, does it?”

“Not a lot. Occasionally. You’d do well not to antagonize him. He’s a dangerous man.”

“Yeah, I got that. That’s what he wanted me to get. He told me to choose a side.”

“And you told him, of course, that you are on your own side. I said much the same to him once, but don’t worry. I imagine he’ll take it better from you, you’re relatively unimportant to him. I must go, the blood’s boiling over. Oh, he’s probably tapping your phone, by the way.”

Sherlock hangs up.

Lestrade doesn’t. Mycroft can hear him breathing, can hear him wondering if anyone is listening. There is always _someone_ listening. In the end, Lestrade says nothing. No threats, no useless “if you’re there...” It confirms Mycroft’s grade two decision.

By then, the car has returned for him, and he gets in.

“For the surveillance, sir, code red or green?” his assistant asks.

Friend or foe? Not that there’s a lot of practical difference. “Yellow, with an initial focus on status resolution. Background, childhood, known associates, associates’ associates. Et cetera and so on.”

“Yes, sir.”


End file.
